Why Screen Printing?

So you want some custom t-shirts for your business or brand and you're not sure the best way to get them made. We know a few things about getting shirts made through our experiences of ordering them from print shops to starting to screen print them ourselves to ensure the level of quality that we wanted from the shirts. I'm sure you have heard of different ways to get shirts made, including vinyl, direct-to-garment, DTF, heat pressed, sublimation, screen printing, and other methods. Each method has its own positives and negatives but screen printing is the best if you are looking to get multiple shirts for your business or brand. Screen printing uses a squeegee to push or press special inks through a mesh screen to apply a printed design onto a t-shirt or apparel, but it's not limited to just t-shirts or apparel. Screen printing can be used to decorate a multitude of things. Screen printing provides the highest quality prints, the most durable prints, and the lowest cost for higher quantity orders for t-shirts and apparel.

Screen printing can be used to decorate any type of shirt. There might be additives that might need to be added to the ink for certain types of fabrics, but there's always a way to get it done. The reason that screen printing is considered high-quality printing is because of the vibrancy of the colors. Other decorative methods will only work on light-colored shirts or some methods just haven't yet reached the color quality that can be reached with screen printing. The inks for screen printing can be mixed in appropriate amounts to create exact Pantone colors for your brand or business. If you want the best colors possible you should look for screen printing, but what if you want designs that last?

The inks that are used in screen printing will survive longer than the shirt as long as they have been properly cured. The inks need to be properly cured at a temperature between 270 degrees to 320 degrees. The length of time required to cure the ink depends on the type, usually water-based vs. plastisol. If you want a shirt that feels like it's been printed on, request plastisol, if you want a soft feel, request water-based. A shop should ensure that the shirts are properly cured by testing them. There are different methods to test the inks, but the best way is to print an extra and throw it in the washer. Nothing makes uncured ink fade quicker.

The final reason to use screen printing is because it allows you to get the highest amount of shirts for the lowest cost possible. A shirt that hasn't been screen printed requires the same amount of time to set up and print no matter how many shirts you order. That's the beauty of screen printing. There is a difficult and time-consuming process to set up the screens and inks for screen printing, but once that is done each shirt takes less time to print. Screen printing takes a similar amount of time to print 25 shirts as it does 50 shirts. This allows screen printers to push that savings onto their consumers.

Screen printing is the perfect option when you're making shirts for your brand or business. You want to ensure that you have enough shirts for all of your employees and you would like to hand out gear to your customers. If you have any questions or want to know more about the screen printing process send us a message and we'll help you out.